The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Tommy

Tommy died in 1969.

He was a hippie with leukemia.

Bummer, man.

After the funeral came the reception at Newman Center.

That’s what his folks called it: the reception.

My friend Phil said, ‘Isn’t that what you have after a fucking wedding?’

The freaks all went to the reception.

Darryl wore his cape.

There were sandwiches to eat and grape drink in Dixie Cups.

My friend Phil said, ‘What is this grape shit?’

I said it was Za-Rex. I recognized it, I said, from MYF.

‘What’s that shit?’ asked Phil.

‘Methodist Youth Fellowship¸’ I said.

‘I went for ten years and once did

a flannelboard of Noah and the Ark.’

‘Fuck your Ark,’ said Phil.

‘And fuck the animals who rode on it.’

Phil: a young man with strong opinions.

After the reception, Tommy’s parents went home.

I imagine they cried and cried.

The freaks went to 110 North Main.

We cranked up the stereo. I found some Grateful Dead records.

I hated the Dead. Of Jerry Garcia I used to say,

‘I’ll be grateful when he’s dead!’

(Turned out I wasn’t.)

Oh well, Tommy liked them.

(Also, dear God, Kenny Rogers.)

We smoked dope in Zig-Zag papers.

We smoked Winstons and Pall Malls.

We drank beer and ate scrambled eggs.

We rapped about Tommy.

It was pretty nice.

And when the Wilde-Stein Club showed up – all eight of them – we let them in

because Tommy was gay and sometimes wore Darryl’s cape.

We all agreed his folks had done him righteous.

Tommy wrote down what he wanted and they gave him most of it.

He was dressed in his best as he lay in his new narrow apartment.

He wore his bellbottom blue jeans and his favorite tie-dye shirt.

(Melissa Big Girl Freek made that shirt.

I don’t know what happened to her.

She was there one day, then gone down that lost highway.

I associate her with melting snow.

Main Street in Orono would gleam so wet and bright it hurt your eyes.

That was the winter The Lemon Pipers sang ‘Green Tambourine.’)

His hair was shampooed. It went to his shoulders.

Man, it was clean!

I bet the mortician washed it.

He was wearing his headband

with the peace sign stitched in white silk.

‘He looked like a dude,’ said Phil. He was getting drunk.

(Phil was always getting drunk.)

Jerry Garcia was singing ‘Truckin.’ It’s a pretty stupid song.

‘Fuckin Tommy!’ said Phil. ‘Drink to the motherfucker!’

We drank to the motherfucker.

‘He wasn’t wearing his special button,’ said Indian Scontras.

Indian was in the Wilde-Stein Club.

Back then he knew every dance.

These days he sells insurance in Brewer.

‘He told his mother he wanted to be buried wearing his button.

That is so bogus.’

I said, ‘His mom just moved it under his vest. I looked.’

It was a leather vest with silver buttons.

Tommy bought it at the Free Fair.

I was with him that day. There was a rainbow and

from a loudspeaker Canned Heat sang ‘Let’s Work Together.’

I’M HERE AND I’M QUEER said the button his mother moved beneath his vest.

‘She should have left it alone,’ said Indian Scontras.

‘Tommy was proud. He was a very proud queer.’

Indian Scontras was crying.

Now he sells whole life policies and has 3 daughters.

Turned out not to be so gay, after all, but

selling insurance is very queer, in my opinion.

‘She was his mother,’ I said, ‘and kissed his scrapes when he was young.’

‘What does that have to do with it?’ asked Indian Scontras.

‘Fuckin Tommy!’ said Phil, and raised his beer high.

‘Let’s toast the motherfucker!’

We toasted the motherfucker.

That was forty years ago.

Tonight I wonder how many hippies died in those few sunshine years.

Must have been quite a few. It’s just statistics, man.

And I’m not just talking about

!!THE WAR!!

You had your car accidents.

Your drug overdoses.

Plus booze

bar fights

the occasional suicide

and let’s not leave out leukemia.

All the usual suspects is all I’m saying.

How many were buried in their hippie duds?

This question occurs to me in the whispers of the night.

It must have been quite a few, although

it was fleeting, the time of the freaks.

Their Free Fair is now underground

where they still wear their bellbottoms and headbands

and there is mold on the full sleeves of their psychedelic shirts.

The hair in those narrow rooms is brittle, but still long.

‘The Man’s’ barber has not touched it in forty years.

No gray has frosted it.

What about the ones who went down

clasping signs that said HELL NO WE WON’T GO?

What about the car accident boy buried with a McCarthy sticker

on the lid of his coffin?

What about the girl with the stars on her forehead?

(They have fallen now, I imagine, from her parchment skin.)

These are the soldiers of love who never sold insurance.

These are the fashion dudes who never went out of fashion.

Sometimes, at night, I think of hippies asleep in the earth.

Here’s to Tommy.

Drink to the motherfucker.

For D. F.